My thoughts so far on Final Fantasy VII

So I've been playing the original PS1 version of Final Fantasy VII on my wii via Wiistation. And this is one of those "Big Games" every "real" gamer has to play as a kind of right of passage. I didn't really know what to expect besides the game being nearly 30 or so hours long. This is the first Final Fantasy game I've really sink my teeth into, I've played an hour or so of the FF1 on nes before putting it down so I don't really have any prerequisites of what the game is gonna be like.

So what do I think of the game so far? I'm really liking it. The gameplay here is very standared JRPG fair, the materia and limit systems add a nice level of complexity to the game with me, only being 10 hous in only slightly understanding them :). The graphics of this game really shocked me with how much I like them. The blocky character models with their big block hands, the pre-rendered backgrounds really give the game its own "character" if you know what I mean. The characters are pretty likable despite being somewhat stereotypes of the genre. Cloud being the edgey main character with comicly spikey hair, Barret being the angry ecoterrorist leader, Aeris the cute and kind girl party member, ect. Despite this I still really like them, hopefully the rest will be just as likable. And finally the soundtrack is REALLY fucking good, the battle music, boss, music, overworld music and Costa del sol are my favorite tracks so far. I still have around 20~ hours so I hope the game keeps getting better, will probably updates this as I make progress.

So its been a fair amount of time since this page was first written and enough has happened in the game for me to give an update.

So let me starts this off with this, the number of encounters you get in this game is really anoying. On the overworld and in dungeons you only get like a 15 second window between fights and it pisses me off, and yes I know "Your supposed to fight every enemy to get gill and exp" yeah but it still really anoying when I'm trying to just go somewhere on the overwold and get beraged by enemies, And another thing is it's sometimes hard to tell where I can go becuase of the pre-rendered backgrounds, at least pressing the Select button shows where I and the exits are. Okay with that out of the way, I'm still really enjoying the game with the story really hooking me in and I'm starting to really like the character and get engaged in their stories. (SPOILERS highlight text to see)Like the moment with Red XII where his grandfather reaveals to him that his father was a brave warrior who protected their tribe till his last breath, but RED saw him as a coward who just ran away from the tribe.Moments like that really get me to like and feel sympathy for theese characters, and I like how the party memebers actually talk and interact with eachother and build strong bonds, I don't get why more RPGs don't do that. Anyway Golden Suacer was pretty fun I waster alot of money on chocobo racing and we got a new party member there, Cait Sith(Witch I find their existence really funny, becuase you got all these fairly normal people in the party, with RED 13 being a talking lion thing but looking fairly normal, but then you got this cartoony looking cat on top of a giant plush monster thing witch I find really funny) Corel Prison was alright with the number of random encounters I got there really anoying me, witch I know was there to make the place feel dangourous witch it did pretty well. Also the Dyne subplot there was also nice to see, and having to fight with Barret solo was also really cool (I wish more RPGs would do stuff like that). And the Chocobo race to leave was actually pretty easy and fun, and getting a buggy to ride around the overwold with was really nice and conveinent. That's enough for today I'll update this page sometime later, bye whoever is reading this :).

So I've made alot of progress in the gap bewtween updates. I've beat Disc 1 and Im now on Disc 2 with me nearing the end of the game.

So, wow... alot of shit has happened in-game. There is going to be alot of SPOILERS in this update and I won't censor them becuase of how many there are, so be warned. So after last update we went to the Temple of The Acients to stop Sephiroth from gaining the Black Materia and we went through this really cool looking maze area that reminded me of the labyrinth from the film of the same name. Then we go to this long corridor with the Black Materia and hieroglyphics on the wall depicting the end of the world. And the Sephiroth comes in and tells us his plan: he is going to use the Black Materia to cast the spell meteor to send a giant meteor down on the planet killing everyone and fuising with the planet? (I might have gotten it wrong its kinda confusing). And after two back-to-back boss battles the Temple is slowley crumbling down and in order the gain the Black Materia somebody must sacrifice themeselves, and in a scene that really confused me Cait Sith offers himslef up to get the Black Materia and there is this really emotinol scene where he knows he's going to die but does it anyway, but in the exact next scene he's okay becuase he's a plush toy and can just go get another body. Then the Temple is destroyed where Sephiroth does some mind trickery I think and makes cloud give him the Black Materia and Aeris goes to the nothern most continent to confront Sephiroth herself. After this Clound has a semi breakdown and passes out and his freinds take him the the semi nenarby village of Gongaga. After Cloud rests he learns from this old couple about their missing son Zack witch makes Tifa defensive and doges questions when Could asks her if she knowns anyone with that name. I already know who ZAck is from just being exposed to him while watching a video on thd Final Fantasy House. After this small curfuffle the gang makes it to the north continent to rescue Aeris. Making it up the north continent we reach probably my favorite looking area in the game the Frogotten City, it has this really cool sunken ocean look to it witch looks really cool to me. Here is were we find Aeris in this underwater catsle like structure were Aeris is. And I think most of you know what happens here, Sephiroth comes out of nowhere and kills Aeris and we have a boss fight with Jenova, and this is were Disc 1 ends. Damn.... I did not expect Aeris's death to hurt as much as it did, she wasn't here since the VERY begining but she did play ahuge role in helping us uncover Sephiroth's true plan and how optimistic she was. And I really like how her theme keeps playing even during the boss battle. After starting Disc 2 we reach this really cool and comfy little snow village the Icicle Inn and to leave this area with have to snowboard down a moutain(This whole area is funny to me becuase only like and hour or so earlier the game had its most emotinol scene were aeris literally died, but now were having fun snowboarding). After that I had to go trough this annoying area where I had to consulte a map and even with that I couldn't tell where I was going. Then we reached tp mputain it self and climbed to the very top (And let me say how overpowered the water ring is, during the moutains boss fight it had this really powerfull water move that had wiped out all of my party members except Red, becuase the water ring absorbs water attacks into HP) once we got to the moutains top we encountered Sephiroth and here is were the main plat-twist of the game happened. It turns out Cloud is a Sephiroth clone made with Jenova and Sephiroth DNA that was implanted with Zack's memories? I think. After this revolation Cloud gets like, mind controlled? by Sephiroth into giving him the Black Materia and goes into this hibernation like trance sheilding himself with this blue orb and unleashing the giant monsters called "Weapon's" (Witch is a really dumb name in my opinion). So Clouds friends and Shrina (who are also here) leave the outain and we flash forward to seven days later were Sephiroth has already summoned Meteor and now we get to play as Tifa and Barret. I really like this part of the game were instead of playing as cloud we play as other members of the team like Tifa, Barret and Cid, I wish more RPGs something would do this with switching up who you play as forcing you to mix and match different party memebers. And at this point you gain acces to the Highwind, a giant aircraft you've seen earlier in the game that you get to pilot around the world, and becomes a semi homebase. So by this point I remeber I haven't found Vincent (Another party memeber) and I go to the mansion in Nibelhem and do the little side quest to have him join the party (BTW Vincent's design so over the top edgy but I sitll really like it). So after some fun in the Highwind we make it to Mideel and find cloud in the hospital, and at that very moment one of the Weapon's attacks and both Cloud and Tifa fall into the Lifestream(witch is a stream containing the life of the planet). After this the game has a really long but really great cutscene where Cloud and Tifa have a heart to heart with eachother where Cloud reveals he never made it into SOILDER and that he was just a lowley Shinra guard, and that all the stories he told of his time in SOILDER were just ones he stole from his friend Zack. I really like this scene in how it shows cloud to be more than a bruting anime boy and how deepley embarrased he was to not have made it into SOILDER and how he joined SOILDER to impress Tifa. After the cutscene ends Cloud rejoins the party and tells them all the truth, later we hunt for the pieces of The Big Mater witch Shinra plans to use to destroy Meteor by luanching them in a rocket at it. And thats were this update ends.

Holy shit, sorry if this update's a long read I didn't mean it to be this long. The next update will probably be after I beat the game or so, I dont know how many hours I have left in the game.

So I've beaten the game, around a week or so ago. I've taken this time to collect my thoughts on the game in this final update (Witch wow only four? thought this would've gone on longer, oh well)

Okay wow, the end of this game was fucking crazy, in a good way. The return to Midgar was kinda expected in a Hero's Journey kind of way, the back-to-back boss fight of the Shinra mech and Dr. Hojo was really intense and him being Sephiroth's father was kinda unexpected but still reasonable. And I don't know if it confuses anyone else but is Cloud actually a Sephiroth clone or is he his own person? I get the theme of Cloud having to let go of his trauma with Tifa and becoming his own person, but is he actually a clone grown in a lab? I'm definetly gonna have to do more research later. The climb down into the center of the planet was kinda annoying but still managable with some of the enemies there really pissing me off, becuase one of them can instantly kill you, and another can stop you from gaining limit. So then there's the final boss, and Oh Man was it fucking fun and intense. Before it there's this little guantlet of enimes with one of them, this big armor guy being really frusturating becuase both of his attacks can 3 or 4 shot each character. This little guantlet leads up to the final fight with JENOVA witch was actually pretty easy with the only hard part about it was having to let JENOVA get 13 or more hits in so I wouldn't have to face the actual final boss with two teams. So, the actual final boss with Sephiroth, the first phase is fairly simple with you having to attack different body parts to make the main chest area vaunrable, while also attacking the head to stop it from healing itself, this phase is fairly simple to beat with the only caviat being when its near death it'll use this attack called "Heartless Angle" witch will leave all party meembers with only 1 HP left. But once its defeated I took a sigh of relife... before the screen fades to black and I hear the first few note of One Winged Angle and find out this is where the Actual final boss begins. So the second phase is really fucking hard, with its attacks being either one-shots or near one-shots with added status effects. With its attack Super Nova being the worse of Sephiroth's arsenal, with it dealing tons of damage and having a really cool, but comedically long animation, but all of my party memeber could actually tank the damage fairly well. Both Sephiroth's new angle like design and intimidatingly badass theme makes this boss fight unforgetable, with it being so hard I had to reload a old save and grind for half an hour or so. After we stop Sephiroth from ascending to god hood I think the moutian leading to the center of the planet starts to crumble but befor we can leave, Cloud gets suck into this dark room via the Lifestream I think? where he must confronte Sephiroth mono e mono. When this cutscene started to play I started to sweat bricks becuase I thought I actually had to fight Sephiroth head on but no, your limit bar atuomatically fills so you can use Omnislash and kill him immediately. So after this we have a really long pre rendered cutscene wherethe gang leave the moutain and see the meteor slowley crashing into Midgar but before it can happen Aeris and the Lifestream come and stop it (I am extremle oversimlifying this but basically this is what happens) roll credits. But there is an after credits scene where it takes place 500 Years Later where we see RED XII and presumably his kids running in this caynon like area before jumping to this cliff were we see the old ruins of Midgar now overrun with nature as we hear people luaghing.

Personally I really liked this game, its not perfect but still really good. The story was definetly my favorite part of the game, and all the character are likable and interesting in their own way. I thought the conclifct between Cloud and Sephiroth was really interesting with how Sephiroth was kinda right with Cloud being just a puppet, but Cloud going out and finding his own path and learning what to fight for (I think thats what its supposed to represent?). The gameplay was pretty standard jrpg fair even though I haven't played many typical jrpg's, the combat was pretty fun with the materia system adding a nice piece of complexity to it. The overworld tansversal was semi annoying both in the actual overworld and in dungeons with how many random encounters you get, but it got a little less bothersom as the game goes on as I came to expect it. The game's difficulty was pretty wes balanced never too hard or easy (except for having restore so early on with it being a free heal basically), sometimes the game did have a little difficulty spike with a boss here or there but overall it was managable. Honestly overall I thought this game was pretty amazing and I will probably start to play some other Final Fantasy games in the future or so becuase of this game. I don't know if I'll be playing Remake or Rebirth but maybe in the future I'll give them a try.